Anna Clawson & Nicole Ward

– curated by Borbála Soós

Shiny Black Thoroughbred

6 December 2013 – 11 January 2014

PV: 5 December, 7 – 9pm with Performace

Shiny Black Thoroughbred, a new project by Anna Clawson and Nicole Ward, continues their investigation into the volatility of hierarchy and Machiavellian strategies of ambition. Contained within manufactured and fictional settings, television sitcoms become metaphors to hint at the lack of progress and horizontal movements within closed networks. In their installation, thresholds between interiors are suggested to act as both an entrance and an exit, with the external world only penetrating the characters lives through carefully controlled techniques.

The title emanates from August Sander’s photograph The Notary (1924), in which a Doberman’s shiny coat mirrors that of his master’s heavy black shoes. The film Dogtooth (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2009) comes to bear, wherein the character of the Doberman is both a status symbol and an expression of power through behaviour training. In Dogtooth, this dog, whom paradoxically is trained by outside professionals, is one of the hermetically partitioned family unit’s few links to general society. In the words of the film’s dog trainer, 'Every dog is waiting for us to show it how it should behave'.